Completed The Noblest of Deeds

"That's the deal, is it?" Walter said. His smile was confident in his decision, and, after taking another sip of whiskey he placed the glass back down on the table and said, "Saydor, please show our guests to the gates of Ostia Anir. Negotiations have come to an end—"

"Walter, wait!" Kristen exclaimed, not even consciously aware that she had used his first name.

Saydor had already stood from his seat, but the Dreadlord glanced over to the Lord to whom, even as a Reservist, he still held allegiance to.

Walter, now a touch impatient, looked to Kristen and said flatly, "What."

Kristen swallowed, feeling that nervousness of old beginning to well up within her chest and surround her heart with its debilitating tendrils. She fought mightily to suppress it.

"Alistair spoke true. If war falls upon Ostia Anir, sooner or later you will be killed in battle or captured and then executed. Mayhap you will become a martyr or mayhap you will not, but in either case you shall be dead. Dead!"

She let out an exasperated huff of air.

"Your brother Logan sends his love for you! He wishes only that you are saved from such ruin as you are now embarked upon! Would you so willingly dispense with your life? Would it not be better to live, to champion your ideals with life instead of death? To not leave those for whom you care and who care about you with lamenting grief and woeful tragedy?"

Walter did not speak immediately, but he was preparing to. Saydor, meanwhile, dutifully awaited his command.

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair had apparently not made the correct step. He had failed, Banick had not even made a counteroffer...Al was prepared to get up and leave. Maybe there would be a chance Walter was just playing hard to get. If he tried to beg now, then it would do nothing but show his weakness. Thankfully, Kristen once again came in to save the day.

He looked between the two, and then looking to Saydor, trying to decide how best to help this situation but his nervousness urged him to hesitate. No, he needed to push forward.

"I do not like bringing up a family in such negotiations, but Kristen is correct. You have brothers and...other family members that need you here now more than they need a martyr."

The pause in his statement indicated a weighty moment that Alistair chose not to act on. An unspoken reminder hung in the air.

You have a daughter.

Kristen Pirian
 
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Stifling silence choked the air of the bedchamber. Each second felt agonizing, as if Kristen were standing on a bridge made solely of thin glass, spiderwebs at her feet, below through the cracks being naught but a perilous plunge down some dizzying cliffside, and all she could was simply wait for the inevitable.

At last the stillness ended.

"Give us the room," Walter commanded of Saydor.

Saydor, shocked and uncertain, said, "My Lord?"

"Give us the room. Now."

Saydor glanced to Alistair and Kristen, hardly any trust to be lost in his eyes, but nevertheless he said, "Yes, my Lord Banick."

And Saydor crossed the length of the room and reached the door and slowly, as if anticipating that something might happen during its closing, shut the door.

Just the three of them now.

Walter's gaze was upon Alistair, clearly more affected by what he had said than what Kristen had said. The firm stance of a man doing hard business at a negotiating table was gone. A conflict which he could not hide swirled behind his singular eye.

His eye which dropped down to the glass of whiskey on the table as he spoke, "'Need' is a strong word."

Alistair Krixus
 
"True, but the correct word...whether they realize it or not."

Alistair knew what it was like to have a shitty father. He had wanted his entire life for his father to change and show him that he cared...maybe he had just never been given a chance...The least he could do was give Walter a chance to be better. That was the least he could do for Ralene.

He wanted to glance at Kristen and see her thoughts, but he felt like the gravity of the situation needed him to stay locked in on Banick.

Kristen Pirian
 
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Kristen felt as though she were balanced on the very tip of a pin. Oh how she reckoned Alistair must feel the same! They had made sudden headway, the gesture of Walter demanding privacy from Saydor tremendous in its import. Each and every word carried gargantuan weight, and to Kristen Alistair was wise indeed to measure his response. She, too, would have to choose her own words carefully.

She studied Walter's expression as intently as she could. A task of colossal difficulty, for the man did not outwardly show much, and what he did was small and fleeting. Yet in Kristen's experience it was not merely one's face, one's body language, but the atmosphere they projected, that which the five senses did not detect but that which was nevertheless felt.

And to Kristen, Walter seemed a man who was tormented by the things, for whatever the reason may be, he would not or could not say. She knew it all too well. She had felt such a way herself in the wake of the Battle of the Blades.

She wanted to try to communicate this to Alistair, flash a quick hand sign to him when Walter was not looking, but no opportunity presented itself.

At last Walter formulated a way to speak on the matter bedeviling him. Looking to Alistair first, he said, "What is...the worst thing...that ever happened to you at the Academy?"

His face was grave and serious.

"Tell me in detail."

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair's face was blank for a moment. He had not expected that. However, the more his brain caught up with the request, the more his face scrunched into a frown. Did he really tell Walter about this? This was not going to make him feel better, but...he deserved to hear this.

Alistair glanced to Kristen, she was another that he did not want to hear this. Her opinion of the Dreadlords was still innocent enough that it had not completely broken her, yet.

He took in a deep breath and gathered his thoughts.

"When...when you are a young rune mage, the first things you learn are about where the strength of a rune is gathered. One of the strongest canvases for a rune is the human body. The rune can take the person's life force and burn it to power the magic...Some of the earliest and most important runes for a rune mage are pressed onto their skin."

Alistair paused for a moment, he was sure that most of them had seen some of the runes that covered the skin of many a rune mage.

"The lifeforce and resiliency of the body are important, and it can be trained...One of the first runes ever inked into my body increased strength, speed, and durability exponentially. A basic rune, but rarely put on one's own skin, unfortunately, the person that gave me that rune was...not knowledgeable in the art. It was not fit for a child of ten. Every day for years, they would put my body through physical hell while I used that rune. It felt like my flesh was being burned away and peeled off. When the day ended, they would bring in a healer to repair my damaged body, and then I would start once again...Eventually, my body grew numb to such pains, and then a new rune would be added to my body. One that brought with it new powers, but at the same time new tortures. The process repeated, every time my body adapted to the pain, a new rune was added."

Alistair was silent for a long moment as he took a deep breath. It was a common training schedule for rune mages, but every mage went through their own personal hell dictated by the runes that were pushed onto them. Some were lucky, and could at least choose those that correlated with their talents and abilities. Alistair had a few he had picked.

The rune on a person's skin, at the Academy, was not just a mark of power. It was a mark of pain, a sign of not hours, but months and years of pain that had been endured for just that one mark. One inkling of power that some at the Academy could imitate without even trying, but for a rune made they had sacrificed so much for small slivers.

Kristen Pirian
 
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All other efforts of staying composed, concealing her emotions, were nothing compared to this.

Kristen sat in empathic anguish beside Alistair, listening to his story with her hands on her knees and her fingers digging into the metal of her armor. Her eyes were just a touch wider than they ought to be, and the rest of her face was now much like Walter's own: she was a girl tormented by the things she could not presently say.

It never got any easier hearing her peers speak of the things they endured. The things which she did not.

Walter, at the end of Alistair's story, reached for the glass of whiskey and downed the rest of it in one long gulp. When he placed the glass back on the table, Kristen thought...maybe...that she could see a slight tremble in his hand.

He looked to her. "Now you."

Kristen blinked rapidly. "M-Me?"

"Yes, you. Tell me with the same detail."

Kristen hesitated. She glanced, almost apologetically, to Alistair and then back to Walter. "Lord Banick, I feel that it would be improper to do so. I did not enroll into the Academy until—"

"Speak, Pirian," he insisted.

More hesitation. A battle of will was being played out within her, and the most visible evidence of it was the twisting and curling of her lips, her teeth occasionally raking across them.

"Very well. Yet I must preface my own account by saying that it pales dearly in comparison to Alistair's, and indeed any that my peers may tell."

And so Kristen told Walter of the worst thing to happen to her at the Academy. Vel Acan. Her first mission, and the utter disaster of it. Complete failure. Shattering embarrassment. Crushing shame. She was of no help to any of her fellow Initiates when she should have been. Mayhap if she had done any better there, had a stronger foundation upon which to build, then the following tragedy of the Canal campaign, Raf's death, would not have happened. But it had all started there in Vel Acan.

Silence for a time after she finished. Walter had his head lowered in contemplation, his hand pressed to his forehead, the heel of it just above his brow.

"Was it worth it?" he asked. And then at last he looked up. To Alistair. "For all that you have gained from the Academy...was it worth it?"

And it was here that Kristen encountered an extreme dilemma. She knew in an instant why he was asking, and she knew exactly what each answer would mean.

If yes, it was worth it, then the knot of that conflict within Walter would have impetus to untie itself, certainly in part if not in whole, and with such a resolution he might well be empowered to continue on resisting the Republic, for even if it meant his death he could die in peace.

If no, it wasn't worth it, then the conflict remained unresolved, and greater was the impetus to live, to seek forgiveness perhaps, but certainly to see an earnest effort of some kind through for a resolution to the trauma he had caused his daughter.

With a pale face did Kristen glance toward Alistair. She did not know what Alistair would say, but she knew what her own honest answer would be.

And, if she said it, her honesty could mean the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of good men and women.

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair did not answer for several seconds. Was it worth what? What was he supposed to compare it all to? A life without hardship? He would not have received that even without the Academy.

Was it all worth it on the battlefield? Yes, he knew when he stepped onto the field that he was one of the deadliest weapons ever created for war.

Was it worth all the nightmares that he woke up screaming from almost every night? No, the others would likely agree with that.

"Thinking of the what if is useless Lord Banick. During those times, when I was having runes chiseled onto my flesh. I was left with two choices. I could break...or I could survive. I chose the latter."

That was all that mattered at the end of the day. He chose to survive. It was true that the Academy produced its fair share of weapons. The likes of Edric, Kalix, and the archons who killed as easily as breathing, but what the Academy produced the most of were survivors. They survived, as long as they did not break, then Vel Anir did not lose.

"I think the better question here is...Was it worth it for you?" Alistair was not referring to this poor attempt at a revolution.

Kristen Pirian
 
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The reversal of the question was the silver blade to any counter Walter may have forwarded. Where he could have pressed Alistair and Kristen on an answer, he did not. He could not, such was the subtle story written in the small creases and wrinkles of his brooding expression.

And for this Kristen was immensely relieved. Alistair's superb verbal flourish had spared her from answering. How awful, when by dreadful circumstance a virtue like honesty could turn into the unwitting doom of good people!

Walter stayed silent for what seemed an interminable time. Hardly did he seem now the military commander and nobleman each had witnessed during the Canal campaign. Sat in his highback chair, head down and eye fixated, shoulders slumped, he looked like a man ground down by the ceaseless abrasion of regret.

At last, then, he looked up, and assumed a slightly better posture in his seat.

"When I was your age," he said of both of them, "there was only one world that I knew. I had complete faith in it. I succeeded in it."

His eye dropped down to the empty glass on the table.

"And yet it has come to cost me."

Some scene, mayhap, he was remembering vividly. He shook his head slowly.

"No, it wasn't worth it."

Then he looked up, pieces of his resolve beginning to coalesce as that regretful look slipped away. "But a man must press on."

An attempt to shift the topic. From where he was weak back to where he was strong. Kristen thought rapidly, trying to conjure a means—not too gentle, not too firm—to keep him focused on Ralene.

Alistair Krixus
 
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Alistair was shaking his head slightly in the negative.

"A man who presses on from loss without learning from that loss is doomed to lose once again."

The young dreadlord initiate kept his face a mask, knowing Kristen would provide sympathy if needed. He was here to say the things that Banick needed to hear. No emotions needed.

"If you press on now then you lose any chance to correct those losses."

Banick could continue on this path. He would more than likely die in battle, or worse die after being humiliated and captured. His daughter would forever know him as the father that failed her.

"The only way to correct mistakes is to swallow your pride and, first, look back at them."

Kristen Pirian
 
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Again, Walter descended into deep contemplation. However great the struggle in his mind might be, the only evidence of it was the occasional tensing and release of his brow. In the meantime Kristen marveled how Walter—and truly men in general, for Alistair himself was no exception—could stand it! How tightly did they keep the reins on their emotions, seeming to fear above all the societal sin of a man who exposed too much of his heart.

After another gulf of time, Walter stood from his seat.

"Wise words, Master Krixus, for one so young," he said. He folded his hands behind his back and turned and walked slowly across the bedchamber. He reached the window and pulled aside the curtains and gazed out over Ostia Anir through the glass.

"Stripped of all other considerations, I suppose that is what lies at the heart of this." The political, the military, the Republic, the nobility, whenever all of it was put aside and it was just him...there was the path that gave him a chance, and the path which very well might not.

He turned around to regard the Initiates. To Kristen in particular now. "You said that I ought to trust in forgiveness."

Kristen nodded, trying not to do so too emphatically, "Yes, Walter. I believe that is the best way forward."

"Very well." And then he took in a breath, kept his gaze squarely on Kristen, and said, "It was me."

Confused, Kristen cocked her head some. "I...I do not understand. What do you m—?"

"It was me. I orchestrated your kidnapping, your delivery into the Warlord's hands, and the Battle of the Blades which followed. All of it was a scheme to embarrass House Pirian by drawing them into a colossal defeat on that island."

Kristen had gone utterly pale with shock. Tiny shuddering breaths rose from her heaving chest. Her eyes were plastered wide open with frigid horror. Her mouth was moving but her lips and tongue were ill-equipped to form words, and all it amounted to was soundless motion.

"You are familiar with Duresh, I take it. An unfortunate leak, his identity. But nevertheless, the half-orc was the asset which secured you from the Embassy. Banick men were intentionally stationed near the privy room, where you were of course taken, to allow for him to exit 'unseen' as it were."

Kristen looked like she was going to be sick. Her artificial hand came up to cover her mouth and her nose her breaths hissed horridly through the gaps in the fingers. She managed to hold back her nausea, but the trauma of her kidnapping, of now being in the presence of its very mastermind and having been for so long, still scarred deeply her afflicted expression.

"It was the world I knew, the one I had complete faith in. I played the game. Though it is clear to say that the move I made at the time did not pan out. A blunder, of course, even though we worked with Foresend to ensure that beach on the Blades was a deathtrap the Cerak lowlife still managed to muck it up. You, Kristen, were of course a footnote throughout all of this. A piece on the board. Expendable."

Kristen was forgetting everything. Alistair, Berenger, the mission, everything. All was narrowed down to the trauma which changed the very course of her life. She was nine-years-old again. Terrified.

And angry.

"It was you," she said hoarsely.

Her trembling hand reached for her sheathed sword. Grasped its hilt.

Alistair Krixus
 
He had him, Alistair could feel it when the man got up to look over the city. It was like the first to move in a game of chicken. Walter had flinched first. Of course, Al would never be so dumb as to smile in the situation. He merely waited and let the man continue through his thought process.

Maybe he should have stopped him there. It would have been so much simpler if he stopped him there. Alistair did not understand what was said, much like Kristen at first, but she caught on to what Walter was talking about quicker than he had.

He knew of Kristen's history in part, but not as much as these two. It was only towards the end of Walter's admission that Alistair understood what was happening.

Really? Right now? Learn from your mistakes, but don't dump your entire bucket out at once. Alistair was quick to move as he had a better angle to see Kristen's hand. He placed his own hand against hers, stopping her from drawing the sword.

He leaned into her ear and whispered.

"Kristen, take a deep breath. You are not the same girl from those years ago. We have a mission with thousands of lives at stake...Remember what you have been trained for. Breath."

Alistair spoke calmly without any sense of worry that he was losing control of the conversation. However, his other hand lightly fell to his belt. He would not let Kristen ruin this mission for her revenge.

Kristen Pirian
 
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Alistair frowned as he moved to grab her real hand. He locked eyes with her showing that he was intently focused on her.

"Have what Kristen, revenge? You won't get to live long enough to enjoy it...Explain it to me. Explain it and I will step out of your way. How do you do this without getting yourself, me, and thousands of other people killed in the process?"

Alistair understood that initiates had their own traumas. Judging by what Walter had just said, this one was pretty bad. He empathized with her, but there was no logic to this decision. As soon as she sliced down Banick, Saydor would step into the room and kill them both.

Kristen Pirian
 
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"I did and it was awful. Kristen, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but get over it. You don't think every initiate wants to kill the people that made their lives a living hell...We do-on't."

The last words died on his lips as he realized that was exactly what he had done with his father. It had been to much, and he killed the man. How was that different from this? The logical part of him told him that the difference was thousands of lives, but the emotional part told him nothing at all.

"Kristen, I am sorry for what he did to you, but I can't let you do this. Remember what we talked about when we left Vel Anir, the good of Vel Anir and its people. You killing him doesn't help them and it doesn't help you...You are still going to be angry when this is all over. Killing him doesn't make it better...Trust me, I know."

Kristen Pirian
 
She heard him. She didn't hear him. Both. A tiny metal core in the back of her mind, that of stoic resolve and sense of duty, informed her with quiet confidence that Alistair was right.

But the thunder of her heart was louder.

"No you don't," she pleaded, her voice cracking slightly. "I've never felt so weak...so scared. Not even in Vel Acan. I have to do this. I have to take back my dignity. I—"

Her words shattered into a quivering gasp of torment and sorrow.

* * * * *​

Walter stood by the window, watching the two Initiates intently. His hands were still folded behind his back in a stately manner.

And for a cunning reason.

He made a small gesture, the motion of his hand in the faint reflection of the window. Not yet, Saydor. Stay your hand.

Walter needed to see this through. See if there was any merit to this idea of forgiveness for egregious wrongs. If Kristen couldn't do it, then of what substance was her and Alistair's argument? Similar was the vitriol from Kristen and Ralene for the respective wrongs he had done.

Here was the proving ground for forgiveness.

Alistair Krixus
 
"You took that back a long time ago Kristen. You came to the Academy weak, and people thought you would be done in weeks. You prove them wrong. You trained harder than any of them. I watched you kill a blue orc single-handedly, which would be a tough fight for someone with years of experience. Kristen, you have gained back your dignity and more."

Alistair watched Banick out of the corner of his eye, making sure no sudden movements were made.

"I told you before we left that you are the type of person that people want to follow. That even includes people like Banick, but you have to prove it every single day. You have to prove to them that you are better than them, right now."

Kristen Pirian
 
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A new kind of torture washed over Kristen's expression as she listened. Her bottom lip pulled tight. Her eyes closed and what tears had gathered spilled over and she pressed her head down into Alistair's shoulder to hide her sorrow.

"Don't make me hurt you to get to him," she said half-heartedly, voice choked.

She gasped for air.

"Please don't."

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair's body suddenly relaxed like what Kristen had just said confirmed his suspicion. He sounded sad when he spoke to her next.

"I'm sorry, but I already hurt you once. I'm not going to let you hurt yourself."

If she wanted to do this, then she would have to get through Alistair first.

"Not when I could have stopped it. Don't care if you hate me for the rest of your life."

Kristen Pirian
 
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The words he'd said, the manner in which he said them, it was all too much.

Kristen wept openly into Alistair's shoulder. Tears of anger, tears of sorrow...and in a small but undeniable way, tears of joy and gratitude.

Her artificial hand, that which Alistair had made in recompense for when he had hurt her before, slipped from the hilt of her sword. It just clutched at whatever handful of Alistair's garments she could grab onto.

In the back of her mind, a little comforting voice. That metal core of resolve and duty, that which had been formed by her Dreadlord training.

It assured her that these were the last tears she would shed over her kidnapping. This was the knot of her own conflict finally coming undone after all these years. A resolution was finally in sight.

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair stood there, letting Kristen sob in silence. Sometimes that was the only thing you could let a person do in these moments. It was only after nearly a minute that Alistair pulled Kristen close to make sure he was ok, and then he turned his eyes to Walter.

Gone was the mask of stoicism, his eyes now held a coldness to them that said he figured out what Walter had been trying and he was not happy. No more games.

"Mr. Banick, do you have any more admissions or can we focus back on the closing of these negotiations?"

Kristen Pirian
 
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One could not stay in the valley forever. In time the depths of emotional anguish lifted back up to level, neutral ground, just as the heights of emotional happiness glided down gradually to that same ground. This, too, shall pass—so it was for the bad as much as the good.

Kristen lifted her face from Alistair's shoulder, feeling vividly that it was slick with moisture and thoroughly a mess. Her eyes she knew were shot red. For the former, at least, she could fix. She parted from Alistair and picked up a folded handkerchief from the coffee table and wiped meticulously her eyes, her cheeks, her nose, cleaned herself up to be presentable again.

She missed the small gesture Walter had made in response to Alistair (a small lift and show of his hand, signaling for patience) but even if she did see it she, now with the traumatic tide of her emotions managed, had figured out the only possible reason for Walter having told her all of that here and now.

Gods! Was this going to be difficult!

"Walter," she said, clearing from her throat the last lingering bit of phlegm. "May you come here, please?"

He did, crossing the length of the bedchamber to the coffee table in the solemn manner. He looked to Kristen, awaiting her response.

And with her hand of flesh and blood she slapped him, the sound crisp like the cracking of a branch in the stillness of an early morning air. Walter's face turned slightly to one side, and Kristen felt an awful sting in her hand from the force, but oh how she wished to feel every little nuance of that fleeting pain.

"I deserved that," Walter stated in a level manner.

Kristen straightened her posture, stood with as much dignity and composure as she could presently muster, and said, "It is not within my proper capacity to speak on behalf of the families and the loved ones left behind by those Guardsmen and Auxiliaries who perished during the Battle of the Blades. From each and every one of them you shall have to find a separate redemption." She let out a breath. "As for myself, in light of the hope that you, Walter Banick, have truly seen the grievance caused for all of its malevolent wickedness, and that you with sincere intent seek to atone and repent for how you have wronged me, then I, Kristen Lucretia Pirian..."

On the precipice she lingered. Keenly aware, in that moment, of the weight of her sheathed sword at her belt.

She pushed that awareness away.

"...forgive you."

Walter nodded in a slow and grateful manner. "I am sorry. For everything."

Kristen nodded in acceptance. Cold and stiff was the motion, yet the motion was made nonetheless.

Satisfied, Walter turned his gaze over to Alistair. "The loss of the title of Ostia Anir, an additional tax for two years, and disqualification from public office for ten years." He made some small corrections to his attire, straightening his jacket and fixing his collar.

"I accept the terms."

Alistair Krixus
 
Alistair did not move to interject as Kristen slapped the lord that they had come to negotiate. Killing him was out of the question, but he deserved this much. Kristen deserved this much.

He had to admit that he was not only impressed with how quickly Kristen got herself under control, but he was also impressed with how quickly she turned that anguish in the right direction to jump back into the negotiations.

Alistair did not say much, only nodding, allowing Kristen to control the room.

"Very well. We will send word to Counselor Berenger and we will inform the army that there will be no battle here...You will be expected to come with us back to Vel Anir."

Kristen Pirian
 
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"I understand," Walter said. A small glance to Kristen, and he decided that now was not quite the time to reveal to her his co-conspirator in the Battle of the Blades. It was best not to once again upset her and draw the ire of Alistair right now. And, with an inescapable shrewdness fostered over thirty plus years of playing the game, he knew that it was also best to keep that knowledge in reserve for now, no matter how repentant he might feel.

Then he looked over the two of them and said, "I must inform Theodore of my decision. Come with me to the gates, and then we will all depart for Vel Anir at first light tomorrow."

"Very well," Kristen said.

Walter nodded. Then called, "Saydor." The door opened and the Dreadlord looked inside the room. "We're heading for the gates in a moment. Accompany us." He glanced around his bedchamber. "Did you by chance bring that other bottle of whiskey up?"

Saydor entered the room, saying even as he moved to retrieve it, "Yes, Lord Banick. Over here. On the endtable."

As Walter and Saydor had their exchange, Kristen looked to Alistair and smiled warmly.

She mouthed the words:

Thank you.

Alistair Krixus
 
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